Vistana to Abound Point Conversion Tracker

[chanakya]

@VacationForever Reg (2), I asked this question in another thread. According to a member that successfully requalified a WLR, it may be possible to do it even for purchases made after Aug 9. I guess this is certainly not a given.

Requalified Post-August 9, 2022 Voluntary Week

I finally finished up the process for requalifying a voluntary week at Lagunamar through a purchase I made after August; I owned the week prior to that but it was not then in VSN. Once I returned the paperwork to Vistana it promptly showed up as StarOptions for this year rather than a week of...

tugbbs.com

 

[celica7101]

I think it was expected that the Maui properties would get better CP ratios than many others, but the flip side of that is that the CPs required to book the Maui properties are very high. As far as I can see, best value is still using Home Options for Maui resorts in high demand weeks and SOs if you want to use other resorts in lower demand weeks where it's possible to access inventory at 8 months. If you own in the Vistana Maui resorts, there is no reason to convert to CPs unless you want to go elsewhere in the Abound system and are willing to live with some fairly severe points devaluation.

I found that I was able to turn my 1wk Oceanfront 2BR WKORVN week into 1 week 3BR Oceanfront at Marriott Ko Olina next year, plus have points left over for a week in Miami or Orlando.

I think the point devaluation may be reasonable if you wanted to turn 1 week into multiple weeks elsewhere, particularly if the "view" category doesn't matter too much. I could also see it being valuable to flip a beach week into multiple ski week if you wanted to go to CO and book 13 mos. out.

 

[celica7101]

1) WLR is voluntary
2) Qualified voluntary (resale without qualification is not eligible) and all mandatory resorts had a cutoff date of August 9 2022 to make it into Abound.

MVC may in the future, offer some sort of requalification of ineligible resale by buying Abound Points from MVC.

I haven't caught up on all 12 pages of this thread... but am I correct in then inferring the following?

1) Voluntary weeks can still be retro'd into the full Vistana system with a developer purchase.
2) Full Vistana week privileges does not imply full Abound privileges
3) they (being Marriott) have not said much about how to do a retro transaction that also allows the week to be enrolled in Abound?

 

[VacationForever]

I haven't caught up on all 12 pages of this thread... but am I correct in then inferring the following?

1) Voluntary weeks can still be retro'd into the full Vistana system with a developer purchase.
2) Full Vistana week privileges does not imply full Abound privileges
3) they (being Marriott) have not said much about how to do a retro transaction that also allows the week to be enrolled in Abound?

I don't know what you meant by full Vistana system. If you are referring to VSN, then if you were to retro a voluntary week now, it will definitely be enrolled into Abound. We don't know if it will also get enrolled into VSN, as I haven't seen a post on this.

I don't know what you meant by full Vistana week privileges. If you are asking about mandatory resale week, if you buy after 8/9/22, it is eligible to use VSN but not Abound.

When you retro a week, it will be enrolled into Abound.

 

[dioxide45]

We have seen some people report being able to retro resale weeks that were purchased prior to August 2022. I don't know if anyone has indicated a retro of a new resale week bought after August 2022. They may or may not have the same rules. Retroing through Vistana is far cheaper than retroing through MVC. Only a few locations are still selling Vistana product (Westin & Sheraton Flex or Westin Aventuras).

 

[celica7101]

I don't know what you meant by full Vistana system. If you are referring to VSN, then if you were to retro a voluntary week now, it will definitely be enrolled into Abound. We don't know if it will also get enrolled into VSN, as I haven't seen a post on this.

I don't know what you meant by full Vistana week privileges. If you are asking about mandatory resale week, if you buy after 8/9/22, it is eligible to use VSN but not Abound.

When you retro a week, it will be enrolled into Abound.

Sorry, when I said "full Vistana system" I originally meant full VSN privileges. As in, if you were to buy/own a resale voluntary resort (i.e. Nanea/Princeville), then buy Aventuras/Flex to retro the voluntary ownership back into full cross-property booking powers within Vistana network.

So we think that even for weeks bought after 8/2022, that if retro'd, would be able to elect to enroll in Abound for the specified conversion rate?

 

[celica7101]

We have seen some people report being able to retro resale weeks that were purchased prior to August 2022. I don't know if anyone has indicated a retro of a new resale week bought after August 2022. They may or may not have the same rules. Retroing through Vistana is far cheaper than retroing through MVC. Only a few locations are still selling Vistana product (Westin & Sheraton Flex or Westin Aventuras).

OK, this is what I was thinking about (that newly acquired resale weeks might NOT be able to retro into abound).

 

[Red elephant]

OK, this is what I was thinking about (that newly acquired resale weeks might NOT be able to retro into abound).

If you retro a week it should have access to Abound. The question I have is whether it has to be done thru MVC only. If you retro thru VSN then maybe it only has access to VSN. Not sure if anyone has done this as it was mentioned above.

 

[celica7101]

I put an offer in for a Nanea EOY. We'll see how it goes.

 

[dms111]

I saw that post. The issue with the conversion rates above is that they do not apply to all sizes and seasons at the same resorts.

Westin Aventuras rate is actually .003328832. For 2024 they are offering us 4935 Club Points for 148,100 Star Options; and for 2025 they are offering us 6400 Club Points for 192,100 Star Options. Can anyone explain why different properties get a different exchange rate? Within the VSN network, every Star Option is worth exactly the same as every other Star Option. The end result for us as Aventuras owners is that we are unlikely to EVER convert our Star Options to Club Points.

 

[dioxide45]

Westin Aventuras rate is actually .003328832. For 2024 they are offering us 4935 Club Points for 148,100 Star Options; and for 2025 they are offering us 6400 Club Points for 192,100 Star Options. Can anyone explain why different properties get a different exchange rate? Within the VSN network, every Star Option is worth exactly the same as every other Star Option. The end result for us as Aventuras owners is that we are unlikely to EVER convert our Star Options to Club Points.

When I do the math on those two numbers, I am getting 30.01 rounding down to the second decimal. The .033328832 is doing the math backward. If you go out further than two decimals, the numbers vary, but there probably have to round to a whole number of Club Points in 5 point increments. Thus resulting in slightly different conversion rates.

 

[Venter]

When I do the math on those two numbers, I am getting 30.01 rounding down to the second decimal. The .033328832 is doing the math backward. If you go out further than two decimals, the numbers vary, but there probably have to round to a whole number of Club Points in 5 point increments. Thus resulting in slightly different conversion rates.

I get the same numbers as you. With both being 30.01. So, no difference in conversion rates.

 

[sponger76]

Westin Aventuras rate is actually .003328832. For 2024 they are offering us 4935 Club Points for 148,100 Star Options; and for 2025 they are offering us 6400 Club Points for 192,100 Star Options. Can anyone explain why different properties get a different exchange rate? Within the VSN network, every Star Option is worth exactly the same as every other Star Option. The end result for us as Aventuras owners is that we are unlikely to EVER convert our Star Options to Club Points.

As far as Abound is concerned, the properties underlying Aventuras are valued differently compared to the properties underlying Westin Flex or Sheraton Flex. Just as within the same property/season, Abound will value certain weeks more or less compared to others, even though Vistana values all weeks in the season the same.

 

[wjarcher]

If you retro a week it should have access to Abound. The question I have is whether it has to be done thru MVC only. If you retro thru VSN then maybe it only has access to VSN. Not sure if anyone has done this as it was mentioned above.

I recently did a retro with Vistana, the retro'ed weeks have both startoptions and ability to elect Abound points.

 

[EnglishmanAbroad]

Can anyone explain why different properties get a different exchange rate? Within the VSN network, every Star Option is worth exactly the same as every other Star Option. The end result for us as Aventuras owners is that we are unlikely to EVER convert our Star Options to Club Points.

I believe Marriott potentially award more points to certain resorts because they feel in doing so they will attract more owners to convert and hence have more inventory available to it's members in 'key' locations like Maui and Cancun (which in turn enables them to sell more points that are needed to reserve those resorts).